Ann Shelton
The story at the heart of Ann Shelton's presentation centers on a woman born in the late 1800s, around 1890, who lived on St. Louis Street in the Cedars, a section of Dallas where many prominent families resided, about a block from Ervay Street. Her parents both came from Pilot Point, Texas, where her grandparents, the Hearns, ran a general store. Her father worked in the shoe department at Titche's, and her mother, Anna Hearn Newberry, was a devoted gardener who kept a greenhouse and helped found the Dallas Garden Club as part of the Dallas Women's Club. Summers were often spent visiting grandparents in Pilot Point.
The narrator attended Mrs. Colbert's School for Girls, Colbert Hall, in the Cedars, where students wore uniforms, learned French, Latin, and Spencerian script, and were trained in the social graces expected of young women who would become matrons of Dallas society. She recalled riding the mule-drawn streetcars along the Beltline for a nickel, dances and program cards, and her 1911 debut at the Idlewild ball, held at the Columbian Club because it was larger than the Dallas Country Club. Through her Pilot Point friend Stella, she met suitors from West Texas, including Will Lewis, a rancher from Clarendon in the panhandle.
Though hesitant, she married Will Lewis when she was 20 and he was 42, and they lived on his vast panhandle ranch, which grew to around 430,000 acres and 20,000 cattle, later combining with the Rowe Ranch after its owner died on the Titanic. She raised four children, wintering in Dallas so her daughters could attend Hockaday, and lived in a series of Dallas homes, including a grand house on Swiss Avenue later used by the Women's Medical Auxiliary. Will spent most of his time on the ranch and remained a distant, private man, though the couple enjoyed summers at the California races. She reflected on nearly 92 years of watching Dallas grow and wondered aloud whether marrying her rancher had been the right choice.
Full Transcript
One across the top and you would walk across that as you can imagine what a mess. Now we didn't have a buggy of our own. My mother was not very much into society, but in the fall she would rent a Victrola, which is a two-feater buggy, and I would go with my mother with our social cards, and we would go calling in the fall, and we would leave our cards with certain patrons in the community. Now, I would go on Sunday afternoon, and I wondered about this. Mother, whose father was so dear, but they had streetcars, and the streetcars then were mule-drawn wagons with seats on each side, and they followed a route they called the Beltline.
And for five cents, my mother would let my brother and I spend Sunday afternoons riding on the Beltline. And I don't know if that was to get rid of us on Sunday afternoon. I went to Mrs. Coart School for Girls, Coart Hall. Now, I must tell you, we had special uniforms. and we had plaid woolen dresses and we had white ruffled aprons that we wore over the top of those and we had long black stockings and in the worst of the weather we had long underwear that we wore under all of this. But we did not change our woolen dresses until a certain time in May regardless of what the weather was like.
Now, in this Colbert school, I must tell you, Colbert Hall was downtown in the Cedars. We learned all sorts of things. In the first grade, we started learning French and Latin. Now, I found out later, we learned it properly, but we certainly weren't pronouncing it anywhere like the way it should have been pronounced. Up on the third floor, we took del sorte lessons. Now most of the girls who went here were not thinking of going further to college They were thinking of growing up and marrying having families and being matrons in society people in the city of Dallas So we learned all the proper skills We learned how to speak correctly No girl from Courthall would ever get her pronouns misplaced.
No girl from Courthall would not speak properly, nor not know how to hold her hands just right, or certainly how to sit properly. and we practiced only, oh, and most importantly, we learned how to enter the room. There are certain ways you enter the room and we learned how to do it well. We also had handwriting. We were certainly schooled in that. We learned Spenserian script and it was a lovely script. We practiced long and hard with that. Now, one day, we were allowed out early because there was an enormous flood and the Trinity River flooded and Mrs. Colbert took us all down and we could watch the steamer going back and forth from Oak Cliff over to Dallas.
Now, my father tried to teach me the proper things. He told me that if you open the charge account, and he did open a charge account for me at Sanger Brothers downtown, because that was the only downtown, opened my account, my bill would come if I bought something, it would come on the first of the month and I should always pay my bill by the 10th. He also told me that respectable people should own their own home and later when cars came out, we should always own our own car. Now, my father and mother were from Pilot Point, as I have told you, and in the summertime, I would go to Pilot Point to visit my grandparents.
I loved my mother's parents. They were so nice, the herds. my grandfather owned a general store in Pilot Point. Now, they were strict prohibitionists. Never drinks should cross their mouths. But my grandmother had a wonderful recipe for blackberry wine. And my grandfather, owning the general store, would come in at lunch every day and he would say, you know, it was an awful hot long walk from the general store. think maybe just a little glass of the blackberry wine would make me feel a lot better. And you know something My grandfather was so good looking and I can still hear him saying that to my grandmother And that he would come home and have lunch with me Now my friend Stella was from Pilot Points and Stella is going to figure very strongly in my life later on Now, growing up in Dallas, as I started to date, oh, let me tell you, that was fun.
The majestic theater, a new theater downtown, had just opened, and they had wonderful plays. And all of the girls and boys would try to get our tickets on the same night on the back row so we could all sit down. Now, on Sunday afternoons, the boys would call. Now, if the boy liked you very, very much, he would, of course, arrange to call at your house late in the act. and we always look forward to the one who came about 4 o'clock because he would stand and have dinner with us. We had dances, program dances. Of course, two or three weeks before the dance was to occur, you would have your program and what the boys would call, of course, And if you were very popular, you would have your car in.
I hope something, right? Every popular girl would. But however, a smart hostess would arrange for the band to do separate extra dances. And a good hostess would always invite stags. These were young men, of course, without dates. And they would come so you would have some excitement, of course, for those extra dances. that came along. We were sneaky. No, yes, yes, we were, weren't we? And we had such, oh, you can't imagine such fun. Now, I, of course, some of my friends went on to college. Some of them went to the University of Texas, but there was not a lot of money for that, and I did not really want to go on to college, so it was time for my debut.
Now, this was, of course, the thing for all of the girls from Society Families in Dallas to do was to have their debut. Now, the new Dallas Country Club was on O'Han, New Avenue. Now, the dance was actually quite small for the big Idlewild ball, so in 1911, the Idlewild ball that I did my debut was at the new Jewish Columbian club because it was much bigger and it could handle more people than the country club Dallas Country Club could Now about this time I was so excited about coming out I was so thrilled about it. But my good friend Stella, remember my friend from Pilot Point, Stella?
She was going to the University of Texas in Austin. And she was going with a boy who had a friend called Bruce McClellan. Bruce McClellan was from Clarendon, Texas, which is out in the panhandle. I had to look it up on the map to see where it was. And so she invited me down to Texas, to Austin, for the party. Well, I had a grand time. There was just a lot of nice people. Bruce was nice, but I think he must have liked me more than I liked him. Because when I got back to Dallas, his mother sent an invitation, and Luke came to Dallas to see me and invited me to come to Clarendon for a party for a week.
I've never been out of West Texas. Have you been to West Texas? I mean, goodness, it's flat out there. I got out to Clarendon. Now the family was charming, and their home was like something you would see in the southern columns. But the brown, it was all brown in the yard going up to the house, and it was different. I mean, they had a dance platform out there. Well, I wouldn't call it a yard. It wasn't a lawn. It was all brown. There weren't that many trees out there. And this platform was out there at the edge, and that was where we were going to have the dances.
Well, they had a houseman who served the meals, and it was the strangest thing. I never said much about it, but there were convicts that hired out the people out in the Panhandle, and he had a white Dutch suit on that he always served meals. But he never wore shoes, and I thought that was awfully strange. I think someone had said, you know, that they didn't put shoes on so they wouldn't run away, but I don't know if that was it or not, but it always struck me as strange. Well, while we were there, though, we went out to this ranch. Now, the panhandle is made up of these huge, huge ranches, and we went out to this ranch, and the cowboys, they had another platform out there, and the cowboys played the violins, and we waltzed, and we danced, and we had a great time.
Now, while I was there, there was his older man, an older gentleman, he was there with Bruce's sister, Bruce McLeod, my date's older sister, and he was a nice man, I'm Mr. Lewis. And so I didn't see much of him, but I did get introduced to him. Well, after we came back to town, they had this big parade, and they They had these, I think they called it like a rodeo, they had these steer contests and roping, and I had never seen anything like that, I mean, from Dallas. I was really quite impressed. Well, I caught the train back to Dallas. I had just sat down, the train had just pulled out, and I looked up and there stood Mr.
Lewis, Will Lewis from Clarington. And he said, well, hello. And I said, well, Mr. Lewis, are you going to Dallas on business? And he said, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. And I said, well, he said, would you like to have some lunch? You know, I just met him, of course, but he said, well. And after lunch, he said, let's go in the back of the car and let's talk. I have something very important to see. So we went back and he said, he said, you see, Mary, I just want to tell you that I plan to marry you. And he said, I knew the second time I looked at you that you were going to be my wife, and I've come to tell you that.
I'm going to Dallas with you. see you home. I'll be back in a few weeks because I have this large ranch and I'm going to be busy, but I'll be back in several weeks to court you. Well, we got off the train. He took me home, got back in the cab and left. Well, I didn't know what to say. I mean, I didn't say anything to my mother and dad. I mean, what could you say? And I thought, he's probably out of his mind. Maybe the heat in West Texas. I don't know. You know, maybe something. Well, I went on with my debut. Oh, I got my dresses.
And I went to one of the balls. I went up to Oklahoma City. And do you know that one of my escorts for the ball was a gentleman named Tom Braniff. Now, you may recognize he went into the airline business after that time. And I stayed friendly with he and his family for many years after that. Well, I came back to Dallas. We had the big Idlewild fall and we had a wonderful time and in the meantime Will Woods from Clarendon, Texas and two of his bachelor friends leased an apartment in Highland Park, got a cook, set up housekeeping for that winter. I couldn't imagine.
He would take me out and I just wasn't interested in getting married. I was having such a good time. Well, there was a new road being built. It was called Mockingbird Lane. And we went for a drive on the Mockingbird Lane one day And he pulled over to the side of the road and he gave me this beautiful ring It was huge And I said Mr Lewis I just not interested in getting married right now. He got mad, took the ring and threw it in the bushes out there beside the road. Well, I said, Mr. Lewis, that is just not the way to act. And I made him get out there and get that ring, which he did, and he laughed, and I thought I would never see him.
Well, I went on with my other parties, but about three weeks later, there was a nod in the Baker Hotel, the lovely hotel we had. It's not in the city any longer. It was blown up, but however, the Baker Hotel was a lovely hotel, and it's time, and my brother was in the lobby, was in the lobby of the hotel, and ran into Mr. Lewis, and he told him that I had asked about and Mr. Lewis came back around to me. Well, I must tell you that I had missed him and I really was growing rather fond of him. And so we started dating again and when he asked me to marry him again, we went out to his for another party at the ranch.
He asked me to marry him again and I said I would. Now, we had to speed up the wedding and I found this was to influence me all the rest of my life. it was getting into September. Ranch business was extremely important so we had to hurry up the wedding because Mr. Lewis had to get back of course to West Texas. We were married at home. I got my traveling dress from the lovely New New Monarchist downtown and we had the wedding at home. The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Dr. Anderson performed the wedding ceremony and we went on our honeymoon trip. We went to the West Coast.
We went to San Francisco. Now I must tell you, I don't think I've mentioned age here, and I should have. I was only 20 at the time. Mr. Lewis was 42 years of age. While we were in San Francisco, I had always read about the Barbary Coast, and I always wanted to see it. And we were staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and I said to Mr. Lewis that I would really like to see the Barberry Coast. And so he said, well, all right, are you sure? And I said, yes, I am. And then we got in the taxi, and the taxi driver says, you're taking her to the Barberry Coast?
And he says, yes, she wants to see it. We went out there, and do you know when we came in and sat down they played the wedding march And I said to Mr Lewis how did they know we were married And he said well for a girl as young as you and the kind of person you are in this place which has this kind of reputation they figured you were a young green thing I didn't care for that. But anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. We came back to West Texas, and we lived on the farm. Now, I must tell you that during this time, on the farm, Mr.
Lewis was farming 430,000 acres, and he had 20,000 cattle. He later, he combined the Spur Ranch, his ranch, Mr. Rowe, who owned another, the Rowe Ranch, was killed on the Titanic, and Will bought his ranch. We were on, and I must tell you this, and I'll get back, I want to tell you this part about the ranch. People forget how large those ranches can get in West Texas. we were on a tour several years after we were married we were on a ship up in the St. Lawrence River on a cruise and there was a gentleman from Connecticut on hold of the ship and he was talking to us and he said oh you're in farming are you Mr.
Lewis and Will said yes I am and he said well so's my sister said her husband owns them 400 acres how many do you own and Will just solemnly looked at him and said I believe at this count it's 430,000 and the man said I didn't realize that I had so much to drink. I could have swore you said 430,000 acres. I think, Mr. Lewis, I'll make you goodnight. It's time for me to go to bed. Will was from a family that had lived in Maryland. His uncle had come out. If you know anything about Western history, and when I went out there, I found how much history there is in the panhandle.
His uncle came out to fence Charlie Goodnight's big ranch. the J.A. Ranch. He spent three years fencing the ranch, and in that time, he lured Will's dad out to Texas with him. And Will was so carried away with it that Will stayed. Now, I must tell you, my good audience, this is a thing that in my book, I'm really curious about your opinion as well, because Will grew up with Englishmen. A lot of second sons of Englishmen came to West Texas to help run the ranches. He was a very polite man. He worked the ranch. He owned these ranches all of his life. Will never wore a cowboy hat.
He always wore a business suit. He never wore boots. He had a special tepidero thing on his horse so he could use those and wouldn have to use boots Will was very much of a businessman He was very much a man who wanted only to be in West Texas And that was his world. And that's what Will wanted to do. When Will, my grandchildren, as the years went on, they would talk about their granddaddy. And he would sit out there and he would sell off thousands of cattle. And he'd reach into his pocket. And all these ranchers kept a little red book. and that's all he kept his records in.
He'd say, okay, this is what we're purchasing. This is what I'm selling. Put his little red book in his pocket and that's how he did business. Now, when I first went to the ranch, you can imagine such an experience. We were out there with all of those cows and they came up very close to the house and I didn't like to get out a great deal. And you know something? I got agri-fompsed. I mean, flat space. Nothing but flat space all around me. But we lived out there until our first child was born. Now, I must tell you that I had four children. I had one son, William, who went back to ranch in West Texas, and I had three girls.
Now, we came back to Dallas with the children, and then we would spend the winters in Dallas because of the schools. My girls went to Hockaday, and we were going to build a home. Now, Will was very proud of the money that he had, and Will wanted to build the finest house that could be built in Dallas. He built it down on Swiss Avenue, the house you may be familiar with as a matter of fact. Today it's used by the Women's Medical Auxiliary. It's down at the corner of Munger and Swiss. Will wanted a house that had steel in it, and he wanted a show place.
Now at that time, my audience, I was only 24 years old, Will built this humongous house. the living room alone would seat 200 people i loved the house it was beautiful but i did not feel like it was my home and so i asked will as the children grew up i asked will to please sell the house it was a beautiful home but i didn't want to live there it wasn't a home it was a place i mean working i put my children in this 200 person living room so will and i wish If I had it to do over, I would not have done that because it hurt Will's pride.
He was offering his wife the most beautiful home in Dallas, and I didn't want it. But Will said, all right, you sell it. But you buy your own house and I don't ever want to hear anything more about this again. Well, we sold the house. We bought a two-story house on Munger Avenue. It was very nice. I loved it. We lived there until our last child was still at home before she married. And it was home to me. My dearest friend bought the house that we sold on Swift Avenue and she loved it and lived there all of her life. And then it was so, and you know something, I like to think, though, that so many people have been able to enjoy that house.
There are weddings there. There are receptions. The women's auxiliary uses it for so many things. And even as a matter of fact, they show on Dallas, on the opening episodes of Dallas, the bedroom, the master bedroom in the house was the first master bedroom on Dallas. And so a lot of people have enjoyed it. Now, I love the other house, but Will, when he was in town, and I must tell you, Will was not in town a great deal. He was on the ranch. We went and spent the summers in Clarendon to be close to him, but in the winters, we were in Dallas, and Will was on the ranch.
We finally sold the house. The neighborhood changed a great deal, and one morning when Will was in Dallas, our next-door neighbor revved up his motorcycle so loud that Will couldn't read his morning paper without being distracted, and he finally looked at me. He called me Bill, by the way, and he said, Bill, sell this house and find somewhere quieter. Well, we did. We moved over to where I live today. It's off Armstrong Parkway at Belford Place, and it is beautiful. And I love it here, and Will spent his last years here in that house with me. In the last years of his life, Will did stay in Dallas.
All the time the children were growing up, Will was not there. I had very serious surgery. Will did not. I called, I wrote. Will did not come And he finally was with me though in the last 20 years of his life The one thing we enjoyed together was going to California to the races Will and I went to La Jolla We went to California each summer and we had a wonderful wonderful time One summer, I won $1,500. I did not bet on the horse. I bet on the jockey, Willie Shoemaker. and I won I also one summer I was losing rather badly and I said well I'm going to quit and he said that's silly I don't see why you've lost three or four hundred dollars as I remember from my checkbook you and our youngest daughter Joan were in New York and you wanted to see the last performance of My Fair Lady and you paid a scalper fifty bucks a piece to see that play now I don't see this makes that much difference if you're having a good time And so I did have our fun, and we went there for a number of years to the race track.
Now, my girls live, one of them lives in Corsicana. Two live in Dallas today. My son did not live to a very old age. He died and was buried in West Texas with his father. Will lived to be almost 90 years old, though. When he died, I took him back to West Texas. There is a plot there where I buried Will. I took him back to the old family home in Clarendon. And I looked at him there in his office, and I thought, I lived with this man all these years, and I didn't really know him. He was a strange man. He did not share his business ideas with me.
He would not talk to me about business. At one point, I wrote a book. I wrote about Will in the early days in Texas, in the panhandle. and do you know that he paid for the book, he paid for the printing, there were some mistakes in it, he paid for the corrections, and he said, alright, Bill, there's your book. He never opened it. He never read it. When I told him what I was doing, Will simply said, well don I make enough of a living for you Why do you have to go and write a book My children said they remember Will as someone who came and went a nice gentleman who was at the house on occasion and then he went back to the ranch My son William and I, in his life, were not very close.
I did not want William to be a rancher, but his father would not have it any other way. So when Will died, I buried him in West Texas with William. There is a plot for his wife. But when I die, I will be buried in Dallas because Dallas is home. And it's where I have lived all of my life. And it's where I feel like I belong. But you know something? You've listened to my story. And you know, in the 92 years of living, I have looked back over my life and all the things that have happened. Dallas, from the days when the telephone was only in some businesses and certainly not in most homes, and everybody thought it was a nuisance to the days when we have call waiting.
I have seen Dallas grow from a small town. When my father had surgery, they scrubbed off our dining room table and operated on him there because there weren't any hospitals. It was long before St. Paul's finally came. The doctor brought me grapefruits, and I had never had those in my whole life before, and now look what all we can get in Dallas today. I have seen Dallas from the 1890s to the present day and how many changes. But I have to ask myself, if I hadn't been such a green lady that had not been around and been a sophisticated woman of 20th century Dallas, what do you think?
I love Will. I never in 20 years after will he says that he's died and I've lived alone I've never gone out with anyone else certainly did opportunities but I never went out but I loved will but I don't know what do you think was that did I do the right thing by marrying that rancher from West Texas or not I leave it to you to decide But in the meantime I am Willie a girl from a town called Dallas Just wait. Okay. Hi, my name is Ann Shelton. I am a librarian, used to be here at the Jewish Community Center as your librarian. Been away for about three and a half years now.
But delighted to be back with you today to share this book, Willie, a girl from a town called Dallas. I was born in the late 1800s, around 1890. I was born and lived on St. Louis Street in the Cedars, which was a section of Dallas where most of the very prominent people lived. It was close to the present day downtown, about a block from Irvay Street. and my family had a nice home there. My mother and father both were from Pilot Point, Texas. My father worked with the shoe department at Teich's for a number of years, among other things that he did. My mother, Anna Hearn Newberry, loved flowers, and mother had a pit dug in the yard, and she had the glass doors over it and had one of the nicest greenhouses in the area.
She was a member of a group of 12 women who got together and formed the Dallas Garden Club, which is a part of the Dallas Women's Club. There was a book club, 12 members in the book club, and each one of them would buy one book, and then, of course, they would pass it around to other members of the club. My mother was not a very social lady, but she would rent a Victrola once a year at Victrola Victoria. She would rent this once in a year in the fall season and we would take our cards around to the other ladies and that was part of our social season